Sun One beings a bright new phase…. Here is bodhinatha at the homa.

One of our top Star Temple builders, long time supporter of Iraivan, Suriyakumar (father of Seiyonne, who has been staying at the Aadheenam for a few days) has been on Kauai for a few days with his wife, Rushika daughter (in blue) Shiyulli and friend of the family Zayanya Chinmiy de Alwis (left). They are from California. Suriyakumar originally came from Alaveddy, Sri Lanka.

They had a good long meeting with Bodhinatha this morning, discussing the future of the Iraivan temple.

This is a promotional piece of the Digital Edition of Hinduism Today. Bodhinatha meets with our Task Forcers while showing a PDF from the Digital Edition on his computer.

Shiyulli and Zayanya check out the ball in the Lion’s Mouth.

It was a tour day today. Hmmm, camera was set to let in a lot of light!

Suriyakumar family at the temple…

The young ladies do their best to carve a bit of Iraivan.

Rudraksha seeds everywhere!

At the San Marga Swayambhu Siva Lingam

Our Sun Homa with Bodhinatha’s talk. The pictures tell the story.

Bodhinatha read his next Publisher’s Desk, which is a long story about Yogaswami.

On July 10th Palaniswami and Sivanadiyar Satya flew together to Hawaii, the Big Island, about 400 miles from Kauai. They were on a special mission.

A Hungarian man, Karel Havelechek, shown here, had invited Palaniswami to visit his world class collection of plants. Not only that, but to take home anything from the collection. It was a surprising offer and amazingly generous, since Karel has spent about 30 years amassing prize botanical gems that can be found nowhere else (well, almost). His collection is only of rare and remarkable plants, nothing else.

One full day was spent going through his gardens, fully four acres of them. One by one the team brought pots and cuttings out of the dense growth, and gathered it here, on Karel’s lawn, where it was inspected for shipment by the Department of Agricultural folks. It all passed!

Hitesvara Saravan, who lives just 11 miles away in his own Meditation Garden, worked to gather all of the necessary tools, boxes, tape, gloves and such for packing and shipping the gems. Here is the team celebrating a day of collecting.

Hitesvara rented a 14-foot flatbed truck to take the plants to the dock. After inspection, they were all loaded on pallets.

Then Palaniswami and Satya carefully secured the plants for their 4-day voyage to Kauai.

Pallet wrap, a kind of flexible cellophane, is used to tie the pots securely.

Brian Willard was a giant help with the project. He and Hitesvara made a wonderful curry dinner for Palaniswami and Satya that night at their remote jungle home. Brian is an avid collector, plus an artist of no mean skill.

Karel was happy to share his gifts (being very careful that he had at least one more of each item he gifted). He is a nature artist by profession, and his work has been widely published, including in National Geographic magazine. Visitors of the future will be amazed to see rare palms, wild trees, massive vines and plants with 6-feet-long leaves climbing the trees in Siva’s Garden on Kauai. Thank you, Karel! And Hitesvara. And Brian. And Gurudeva, for this abundance of nature.